TECHDIGEST – Telecommunications services provider, Airtel, has announced is partnering with United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) under the Reimagine Education Initiative and will be connecting 620 primary schools in Nigeria to digital learning in the next three months. The partnership is expected to benefit over 300,000 students across the country with access to the Internet and devices.

In the first year of the five-year partnership, Airtel will provide all the resources for digital learning to the identified schools including reliable broadband connectivity, tablets, and free access to a world-class curriculum through the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP).

Developed by the Federal Ministry of Education, UNICEF and Microsoft, NLP is an e-learning platform with online and offline capability that enables continuous access to quality education. Airtel’s support will benefit students with uninterrupted access to quality learning materials. Airtel is also providing free access for any Airtel subscriber to Youth Agency Market Place (YOMA), a UNICEF digital platform for skilling, upskilling and encouraging young people’s engagement.

Currently YOMA has 115,000 users in Nigeria. This number is expected to grow with Airtel support, especially for young people living in hard-to- reach areas with no to low access to data or connectivity.

In an MOU signing ceremony to flag-off the initiative today in Lagos, Airtel said it has completed process of providing free access to the two digital platforms for the targeted beneficiaries. Airtel has committed $1.3 million worth of complimentary data for the two platforms and data provision for learners in the year alone.

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20 schools in Lagos and Kano are to be connected in December 2022, while the connection of the remaining 600 schools would be concluded before the end of February 2023, complete with ultra-modern routers tablets and mobile broadband network.

Speaking at the launch, the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Airtel in Nigeria, Surendran Chemmenkotil, said: “Education, especially digital learning, forms a significant part of the company’s sustainability agenda for Nigeria and it will stop at nothing to bridge the huge digital gap that currently exists in mostly rural primary schools across the country.”

“With this programme and partnership, we are providing both world class education and digital inclusion for thousands of underprivileged children and our goal is to connect, empower and transform as many children and young people as possible. Education is power, and connectivity provides the leverage to become unstoppable. At Airtel, we are confident that this investment will not just transform lives but will create a wonderful future for millions of Nigerian children and young people,” he said.

UNICEF’s Country Representative in Nigeria, Cristian Munduate said, “This is an important milestone and a step closer in reducing the digital divide in Nigeria. Quality digital learning is the fastest route to improving learning and equipping children and young people with the 21” century skills needed to fulfill their potential and to live their dreams. We are delighted that Airtel Nigeria shares UNICEF’s vision and will help in driving the process to scale-up access to digital learning for children and young people across these schools.”

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TECHDIGEST – In line with the National Data Protection Regulation (NDPR), the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), is going into partnership with Airtel Nigeria to provide digital literacy platforms through joint Corporate Social Responsibilities.
Kashifu Inuwa, the Director-General of NITDA, proposed this initiative while receiving the Mr. Surendran Chemmenkotil, the Managing Director/CEO of Airtel Nigeria and his management team on a courtesy visit to the Agency’s headquarters in Abuja.

Inuwa explained that NITDA’s regulation is not to stifle innovation or to be a constraint to businesses but to level the field for innovations to thrive.

“IT is dynamic, it is changing; new things are coming; we must be innovative in the way we regulate because our regulation is not to put unnecessary stumbles in the business environment but to make it easier’’, he said.

Government’s role in business is to intervene in terms of policy, infrastructure in the unserved and underserved communities. We all know the key role data plays today and what is happening globally around campaign on data privacy, surveillance capitalism and so on, explained the NITDA DG.

He stated further that it is not only about collecting the data but how it is utilised matter the most. The focus on data privacy is to let people be conscious and have ethical values, with the realization that these data belong to human being and should be adequately protected.

While intimating his visitors on possible areas of partnership, Inuwa disclosed that NITDA have a lot of initiatives that are targeted at igniting activities in the technology ecosystem to create more demand for Airtel services.

“We are doing a lot around digital literacy and digital entrepreneurship, that enables the use of digital devices to increase revenue for the data providers,” he explained.

He stated that at NITDA the focus is to bring innovation into traditional, as well as emerging resources, identify new market, create non consumer market values, so that there would be shared incentives that keeps both parties in business.

The NITDA boss averred that the partnership, through your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can promote the implementation of digital literacy, an ambitious target of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration projection of achieving 95% digital literacy by 2030.

Mr. Ibrahim Umar, the Agency’s Director of Finance, commended Airtal for its compliance in remitting its annual levy of 1% profit before tax to the Information Technology Fund that is usually collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Services.

In his speech, Dr. Vincent Olatunji, the National Commissioner, Nigerian Data Protection Bureau (NDPB), affirmed that the issue of data is key globally.

“There is hardly anything we can do now without going online. Every aspect of our life is being digitized and the core of it is data,” he added.

The Federal Government of Nigeria recognizes this many years back, but a major step was taken in 2019 when the NDPR was issued. “We are glad to say that Airtel is one of the companies that has consistently complied with regulations, and we really commend you for this,” he added.

He further revealed that the NDPR gave birth to the Bureau. Mr. President graciously approved the creation of the Bureau based on the recommendation of Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, about three weeks ago.

He noted that stakeholders would be seeing a lot of actions from the Bureau soon especially in area of capacity building which is key to the development of IT.

He reiterated that data protection is a global issue, and whatever capacity we have here in Nigeria will be the same in any part of the world.

He advised Airtel to have its data protection team that would oversee data and advise management on what to do in terms of awareness, capacity, organizational and technological measures that need to put in place, to ensure that the data of Nigerians are adequately protected.

He finally implored the Airtel management to report any breach in data protection to the Bureau within 72 hours.

The Managing Director/CEO of Airtel Nigeria excitedly said that he is amazed with the extent of work carried out by NITDA, especially in compliance with the NDPR.

Source :Tech economy.ng

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